The largest portion, by weight, of most food animals is composed of water. From about the time an animal is slaughtered, its carcass begins to lose water, dry out and shrink. Shrinkage, which begins on slaughtering, continues through the refrigeration and butchering steps in meat processing, and also during cooking. As a result of such shrinkage, the meat generally becomes somewhat tougher and can be harder to butcher. As a further result of this shrinkage, the meat provider obtains a lesser amount of product to sell, and that product is of diminished quality. Additionally, shrinkage causes the meat purchaser to buy a smaller amount of product to cook, and cooking shrinkage puts a still smaller amount of cooked material on a platter to serve.
Several processes are known in the art which are said to minimize or reverse carcass shrinkage. Among these are those processes in which the carcass is sprayed or fogged with an aqueous solution, or the carcass is dipped into a water bath.
In some anti-shrink techniques in which water is added back to the carcass or its meat to return the water content to a natural level, it is found that such water is usually not held firmly therein and is lost again on processing. For example, it is known and usual in pork sausage manufacture to mix 1,000 pounds of pork chunks with up to 31 pounds of a brine solution containing 30 pounds of water and one pound of salt (sodium chloride). About one minute or more is required for the pork chunks to become moisturized by sorbing the brine. Then, during further processing, when the moisturized pork chunks are ground, shrinkage again is manifest in that some water is lost from the ground, moisturized chunks, lowering the yield of ground meat produced. When sausages containing 60% lean--40% fat ground pork are prepared by this known and usual method, and are cooked with continual rolling at a temperature of about 340.degree.-350.degree. F. for 10 minutes under standard conditions, it is observed that they shrink to about 38-43% of their precooked weight, or maintain about 62-57% of that weight. In addition, air pockets are often noted between the sausage casing and the meat therewithin and the sausages curl.